Good Day for Bees

What a difference a day makes!  Well, OK, a day with sunshine.  I've been gritting my teeth for a week as I see flowers blooming, but with all this rain and grey days, the bees haven't been able to get to them.  Plus, I've been dying to see what our new solar wax melter can do, but with no sun, there's been no solar power.

That changed today.  We were predicted to get some sunshine in the afternoon, so I was hoping for a little action on both fronts.  When the sun peeked out in the morning, I raced the melter out onto the table on the deck and faced it towards the sun's rays.  The sun kept playing peek-a-boo through the clouds for the first couple of hours, and the temperature never got above 57, but there was a bit of melting around the edges, some of the comb coming together into pieces solid enough for me to know that it would work.  I let it go for an hour or so more, and went back to check it again.

Apparently, the sun a had a much better opportunity to do its business, for when I came back, the wax had almost entirely melted, run through the filter, and was sitting in golden chunks in the receiving pan.   The entire tray had melted down, and all this on a partly cloudy day below 60!  I can't wait to put it to use on one of our hot, summer days!

Meanwhile, the bees were hard at work.  At one point, all of our hives had orientation flights going on at the same time.  Lots of activity in the apiary, lots of bees in the air.  We needed to take a look into one more hive, as we had run out of time on our last inspection day, and the weather hadn't permitted it since then.  Another hive needed a new bottom board, as we had had to make do with an unpainted one at our last inspection.  Today seemed a good time to take care of those pleasant chores, so we suited up and dug in.

I'm happy to report that all the hives look good.  That last hive hadn't been opened since last fall, and though things looked good from the outside, I wanted to take a peek inside to make sure.  Plenty of brood, nectar coming in, the bees were loaded with pollen; I think we have some happy campers in the bee yard.

So it's been a good day, bee-wise.  Oh, the wax we rendered?  It's already earmarked for a special batch of lip balm, the first to use wax from our own hives.  We're looking forward to it, and I think you will, too.

Can't wait till we get some more sunny, bee-friendly days.  Tomorrow?  Uh, no.  Sunday?  Guess not.  Monday?  Tuesday?  Someday?

After the drought year in 2012, I promised that I would never again complain about the rain.  So this is me, not complaining about the rain.

Solar Wax Melter

Our newest tool in the beekeeping kit: a solar wax melter.  I made this based on plans I found online, with some modifications of my own.   I put the finishing touches on this today and couldn't wait to try it out. 

Even though it was cold today, about 47 degrees when I set it out, I thought it might warm up enough to give me some idea of what it could do.  I left it in the sun, and when I came back 15, 20 minutes later, I opened it up, stuck my hand on the pan - and damn near burned it!  Yes, it got that hot that quick.

Naturally, I had to give it a real test.  So I put all the saved comb we had into the pan and watched carefully.  It immediately started showing signs of melting, little bits tumbling down, slumping within the pile, it was very gratifying to see.

I left it to do its thing.  When I came out a to check it a half-hour later, the clouds had rolled in and the sun was hidden.  Drat.  But I had seen enough to know that it would work, so I can't wait for a sunny day.

Hive Stand

We're getting ready for Spring.  After a winter spent making new hive bodies and swarm traps, we're looking forward to catching more bees to fill them.  But where to put them?  There are all kinds of hive stands shown on the internet, so we had a lot of options.  What we went with is fairly simple and straightforward, but should be sturdy and long-lasting.

These are treated two-by-eights sitting on concrete post supports.  The crosspieces will keep the beams from wobbling.  The gravel underneath is a ton-and-a-half of small trap rock from Burkdell mulch, delivered and unloaded by Ruth's daughter-law, Chrissy Strusz (Thanks, Chrissy!).  Besides providing a solid, stable surface for the stand to sit upon, the gravel should help keep down the small hive beetles, a notorious pest in an apiary.  Now we are ready to move our existing hives onto the stand, and fill in the space with all those new swarms we're going to catch.

One other feature of this stand is that the space between the boards is just right for supporting a frame when it is removed temporarily from the hive. 

So what will we do if we fill all the space on this stand with hives?  See that pile of blocks to the far right?  They'll get pressed into service as hive stands again until we can make another addition to our apiary.  Can't wait!

First Honey

Our first honey harvest!

As I said in the previous post, we hadn't intended to take any honey from the hives, but changed our plans once we got in there.  It's not a lot, only a couple of pints (plus another little dab that went into my oatmeal this morning), but it's ours!  The picture really doesn't do it justice, but trust me, it's beautiful.

The wax from this is set out for the bees, so they can get at the residual honey that couldn't drain off.  Once they've cleaned it up, we'll render it and save it to make things later.

I know, in the great scheme of the universe this is a pretty small thing.  But we have this wonderful product coming out of boxes which were completely empty less than a year ago.  There's something a little miraculous about this.

The Year's First Hive Inspection

Yesterday, Ruth and I did our first hive inspection of the year.  Beautiful afternoon, sunny, breezy, a great day to get into the hives.  We’ve seen a lot of activity, lots of bees flying in and out, lots of pollen going in for the past two weeks, but we’re still pretty new at this, still not much experience, and we didn’t know what we were going to find once we got in there.

Bees go through a lot of stores in the winter, and though we had left them everything they made last year, there was still the fear that they might be running low on honey.  It wouldn’t have surprised us at all to find lots of empty frames inside the hive.

Imagine our surprise to find the boxes nearly full of honey!  Apparently, the bees had had plenty to eat, and were already starting to pack it away again.  Lots of honey, a fair amount of nectar, and best of all, lots of fresh brood in a very good pattern.  That means the queen in each hive is thriving, already hard at work laying eggs and making new bees.  It was very reassuring to see the colonies booming.

Though we hadn’t expected to, we wound up taking some of the honey from the hives.  We’re trying to go foundationless, meaning that instead of a sheet of plastic in each frame upon which the bees build their comb, we have an empty frame with a comb guide at the top to encourage the bees to build straight comb within the frame.  Unfortunately, the bees didn’t have a ruler inside the hive, and some of their comb ranged over two or three frames.  We carefully cut the errant comb loose, arranged it to fit within a single frame, and used rubber bands to hold it in place until the bees can reattach it.  In some cases, the comb was so wonky (the technical term) that we wound up just cutting it off and tossing it in a bucket along with the burr comb.  We had enough by the end that we will have to work a bit to extract it, and we’ll wind up with several pounds of fresh honey. 

All in all, it was a very satisfying day.  The bees look great, and we seem well on our way to a successful bee season.  We’re already looking forward to swarm season, catching more bees, and growing our nascent apiary.  And we can’t wait until we can make our lip balms and lotion bars with beeswax from our own hives.

Stay tuned.